MONTREAL — The controversial French feature film Survivre avec les Loups (Surviving with Wolves) makes its North American première in Montreal.
The film, about how a little Jewish girl survived a 3,000-kilometre perilous trek on foot across Europe alone during the Holocaust, is being screened during the Cinemania Film Festival and runs at the Imperial Cinema from Nov. 6 to 16.
By Véra Belmont, the film is based on the bestselling autobiography of Misha Defonseca (whose real name Monique Dewael). The cinematic adaptation has caused a stir in France because the veracity of that memoir has since been disputed.
Fact or fiction, the movie makes for great art, according to Cinemania founder and president Maidy Teitelbaum.
An eight-year-old girl leaves her native Belgium after her parents are deported during World War II. With only the aid of a tiny compass, she traverses the continent to Ukraine in an attempt to find them.
She survives by stealing food, avoiding enemy soldiers and sleeping in forests. The title comes from the companionship and protection she receives from wolves, which save her life.
“Surviving with Wolves is a transfixing Zhivago-esque saga of immense beauty,” said Teitelbaum, “a fabulous fairy-tale epic laced with tragedy, comedy and wisdom, and young Mathilde Goffart’s performance is absolutely astonishing.”
Belmont will be in Montreal for the film’s presentation.
Cinemania, now in its 14th edition, presents 31 of the best of recent French-language films, mainly from France, always with English subtitles. Survivre avec les Loups will be screened Nov. 12 at 9:15 p.m. and Nov. 14 at 12:30 p.m.
“By coincidence,” said Teitelbaum, six films at this year’s festival have Jewish themes, perhaps because memory figures prominently in the overall program.
The other five Jewish-themed films are all either Quebec or Canadian premières.
Les Murs, titled Cycles in English, by debut director Cyril Gelbert, is a sensitive portrayal of aging and dementia, and how it strains families. It stars Shulamit Adar as a charming elderly Jewish widow who is losing her memory and lives in the past, at a time when her husband was alive.
Her son and daughter, who are in their 50s, are trying to cope with the downward spiral of their once-vibrant mother, as is her granddaughter. The pathos is lightened by a romantic subplot.
Gelbart will be at Cinemania, as well.
Les Murs is on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 10 at 2:45 p.m.
Family relationships is also the focus of the tender Comme Ton Père (Father’s Footsteps) starring well-known actor Gad Elmaleh. In this French/Israeli co-production, Elmaleh plays the head of an immigrant Jewish family that settles in a poor Parisian suburb in 1968. He’s an ordinary man who turns to small-time racketeering to make a meagre living and gets in over his head.
The story is told as a memoir through the eyes of his loving 11-year-old son. Yaël Abecassis (who appeared in Live and Become, a hit at Cinemania three years ago) is the stalwart mother.
First-time Israeli director Marco Carmel was inspired by characters he knew in his own boyhood. Comme Ton Père was nominated this year for five awards, including for best film, by the Israeli Film Academy.
Comme Ton Père will be screened Nov. 8 at 5 p.m. and Nov. 11 at 12:30 p.m.
Acclaimed Israeli director Amos Gitaï’s new film Plus Tard tu Comprendras (One Day You’ll Understand), a French production featuring legendary actress Jeanne Moreau, is also coming to Cinemania.
It is adapted from noted French cultural figure Jérôme Clément’s book about his Jewish mother’s silence about World War II and the deportation of her parents.
In an attempt to understand his family and country’s past, the son delves into his family’s past. He discovers his Catholic father’s declaration that his children are also Catholic and visits the village in the French countryside where his grandparents hid until they were denounced and sent to Auschwitz.
Plus Tard tu Comprendras will be shown Nov. 9 at 3 p.m. and Nov. 11 at 4:45 p.m.
The other two Jewish-theme films are humorous.
Dans la Vie (Two Ladies) by Philippe Faucon is about the unlikely friendship between two older, rather cantankerous women, one Muslim Arab, the other Jewish, who live in the Mediterranean city of Toulon in France.
The two are brought together when the Muslim woman becomes housekeeper to the infirm Jewish woman. The initial prejudices and tensions soon give way as they realize how much they have in common and enjoy each other’s company. Remarkably these are non-professional actors.
Dans la Vie is shown Nov. 13 at 3 p.m. and Nov. 15 at 6 p.m.
In Faut que ça Danse! (Let’s Dance!), the great actor Jean-Pierre Marielle plays Solomon, the 80-year-old patriarch of the eccentric Bellinsky family of Paris. Despite his advanced age, Solomon takes up tap-dancing and starts an affair with a sexy younger woman. The suggestion by director Noémie Lvovsky is that the elderly gent is trying to escape memories of the loved ones he lost in the Holocaust.
Marielle was nominated for a 2008 César for best actor, and Bulle Ogier, who plays his estranged wife, was nominated for best supporting actress.
Faut que ça Danse! will be screened Nov. 8 at 11 a.m. and Nov. 10 at 4:45 p.m.
Teitelbaum was decorated a couple of years ago by the French government with the prestigious Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her determination to bring French films to a wider North American audience. This June, she was also awarded the Médaille Beaumarchais, which has been bestowed in France since 1777 to those who work to protect the rights of artists and composers.
Teitelbaum and her committee each year screen nearly 200 films, trying to find the best new films by established and young directors.
For full details, visit www.cinemaniafilmfestival.com.